Wednesday, February 22, 2023
If anyone is keeping count, the last time you heard from me was on February 1st with a new Behind the Camera and a fresh trek out to Jonesville. If you will recall, our house was starting to look like a good candidate for a decay photograph with the siding and roof issues. I had thought that things were starting to look up at the beginning of the month, but we found out that we had only just begun. Since we last talked, the hot water heater has gone out, a lighting fixture in the kitchen has died, and we found out that the entire roof needs to be replaced since the shingles only have a couple of years left on them. After returning from Lowes getting replacement doors ordered to go with the exterior remodel, Toni met me at the door and let me know that her sink drain stopper was broken. I pulled that all apart and found two different issues which forced her sink to be inoperable until the needed parts arrived so I could fix it. Yep, I’m really hoping that Bob Villa is looking for a room to rent because I could sure use his help with This Old House.
Having to be so involved with so many different issues here at home, I just haven’t had the creative energy to think about going out for new photos. Ironically enough, I knew that I needed to get out there again and start to focus on photography which would take my mind off of the home restoration we are now involved in. This is a strange time for me because I am used to creative slumps, and I know how to deal with them. Having my mental energy derailed for such a long period of time is something totally new for me. I knew that the answer was going to be just getting out there and getting started which seemed simple enough. I even tried late last week to go out and try to find something to shoot. I drove around for 85 miles under fantastic conditions, but just didn’t see a thing that I wanted to photograph. I wasn’t upset, or even all that frustrated with the lack of results, but it was a little discouraging for the months ahead. I just can’t afford to cease operations because of the house and could actually use some extra business to help pay for all of this. I needed my photography to be therapy once again which I haven’t really invoked in a number of years. However, if I couldn’t get my mind around creating again, there was just no help at all that photography could provide.
Maybe Toni sensed this stalemate in my psyche and decided to come to the rescue. She suggested that we do a portrait session in the studio which is actually kind of a big deal. She hates being in front of the camera, and it is rare that she is excited about doing a shoot. Regardless of how I was feeling creatively, I needed to jump on this opportunity because there were a few new things in the studio that I wanted to try out. This was a great opportunity to do just that. I started to get things set up in the studio and that got my creative juices flowing because I was envisioning a final photograph. However, that fell apart when I started to get the strobes dialed in and realized that all three batteries were dead. It was going to be at a minimum of four hours before they were ready to go, which meant that the session was going to have to be put off until the following day. Toni was very understanding of this, and even though she had gotten dressed and put makeup on, she reverted back to her comfortable attire and let me get the batteries all charged up.
The following day we spent about three hours in the studio working two different sets with some very different lighting options. It started kind of slow as I was getting back in the swing of being a photographer after more than two weeks without holding a camera. After I got warmed up, things started flowing nicely and I was beginning to enjoy myself. The photos were turning out very nice and I was pretty confident that I was going to have a number of keepers to add to the portfolio. At the end of the three hours, I was wiped out and Toni was rather tired as well. I broke the studio down and called it a day leaving the editing for the following day.
As with the actual photo shoot, it took me a little while to get back in the swing of editing and I was moving through things a little awkwardly at first. It wasn’t long before I was back to my usual pace moving through the images. I ended up doing 26 edits over about eight hours which left me feeling like a photographer once again. I had detached my mind from the stupid house successfully for the better part of two days at this point. I was finally able to think about things like composition and exposure without wondering what was going to fail next with the house. That brings us right up to this trek.
Looking at the weather as I will always do in preparation for a trek, I saw that the clouds were going to be favorable on Wednesday. I had no idea where I wanted to work but felt that the closer the better so that I would be more familiar with what was there as opposed to driving aimlessly searching. I needed a sure thing in a manner of speaking. I thought about locations close to home that I haven’t shot yet. There are still some of those out there believe it or not. One of the locations happened to be very close to a friend of Toni’s. I had seen several old vehicles tucked in behind a house from the road and had wondered about stopping to ask permission to get some photos. I had never been convinced of any compositions there before so I resisted wasting the ask. Since I really didn’t know what I was going to shoot, I figured I might as well give it a try if I could get permission.
I sent Toni’s friend a text to see if she knew the property owners. Unfortunately, she did not know them on that level. They were more acquaintances in passing. I did manage to get some information that they probably weren’t the type folks to greet me at the door with a gun which made me happy. That was all the planning that I needed to do for this trek. The clouds were going to be pretty good through most of the day which meant that I could get a later start, so I wasn’t disturbing anyone too early in the day. That start was a little later than I had planned because I accidentally overslept by an hour.
It turns out the late start worked out well because on my way out of the house, our contractor dropped by to measure the posts on the porch railings to make sure that we got the right replacements. Things have a strange way of working out, I guess. When he had what he needed, I went back in and got everything together to head out. My destination was just a few miles up the road so it took no time at all to get there. I pulled into the house that was associated with the property where the vehicles were and went to the door and knocked. I was greeted by a couple who said that they just rent the house and the actual owners were across the street. Both cars were there so they assumed that they were home. I thanked them and went across the street to see if they minded if I grabbed some photos.
After a brief chat with the property owner, I was given permission to access the property and get some pictures. I’m not sure she expected me to be there more than an hour and a half, but that is how long I ended up working on compositions there. Once I got parked, I grabbed my bag because I had absolutely no idea what I was going to need. I started out with my 24-70mm lens since it was the most flexible lens that I had. I walked around to get a feeling for what I had to work with. There were two Fairlanes, and two pickups that I was interested in. Mixed in with these vehicles was an 80’s Crown Victoria, a 90’s CRV, and a ’00’s Nissan Frontier. There was also a third 60’s Ford pickup, but there was no rust or patina on it which made it of little use to me. I was going to have to be creative with the compositions to keep the focus on the vehicles that I was interested in, while keeping the others out of the photos. To make matters worse, the power company was working on the power lines not far from here and there were two bucket trucks elevated into the sky that I was going to have to watch from certain angles.
I started out shooting some isolations on the Custom Cab truck but wasn’t really liking what I was coming up with. I moved around to the other truck and started to look for isolations there. I just wasn’t finding anything that I really liked but kept coming back to an overall view of the truck. The problem with that was all the other vehicles around it. My best chance for isolating the truck was from the driver’s side front corner. I got into position there and saw that the two bucket arms were going to be in the shot unless I moved in close and low. I decided to switch lenses for this and go with the wide angle one which would give me more leeway on that wide end. I managed to get into a position where the arms were blocked by the truck and I started to make exposures.
In the first couple of frames, I could tell that the sky was not going to give me much detail at all with the exposures that I was having to use. I went to my bag and grabbed a 3-stop grad to use along with my polarizer. That did the trick, but now I was starting to not like the extreme angle that I had been forced to shoot because of the power company. I looked to see if I could get a little more elevation and to my surprise, both buckets were out of the scene. I elevated the camera and framed up a similar shot, but one with a bit less perspective distortion. It was a vertical composition so that I could eliminate the Fairlane that was parked next to it as well as the bright red CRV to the rear. The composition was a little funky for me, and almost felt like a photobomb with the proximity of the truck to the camera. I tried to crop it to where it all made sense and worked as a photograph. I think it works, but with a strong reliance on humor in a photograph. Fortunately, I do like finding the human qualities in my subjects.
I didn’t spend much more time on this composition because I just wasn’t sure if it was going to work or not. I eventually moved to the passenger side front corner to see if there was a better composition to be had there. The light was better at this angle, but the sky wasn’t as good. There was also no way to crop out all of the neighboring vehicles which meant forming a composition where they could be included. I kept the same lens and filter combination on the camera and kept the camera down low for this side as well. The overall flow of the image was looking better, but the red CRV was still very visible between the two Fords. I made the decision to minimize it as best I could, and then I would work on decreasing the visual pop in post production. One of the other pitfalls of this composition was that the Fairlane that was parked just to the side of the truck was going to be in the photo as well. had there been a front end on the car, it would have made more sense, but with just a frame, I didn’t want to include much of that car at all for fear that it would distract too much from the main Ford.
This composition was a little more cluttered but seemed to be better arranged than my previous one, so I committed to this one for a while. I waited until the clouds moved into a position where they would add interest to the overall image. It took a while, but not excessively long in my book. It was while I was working on this composition, I realized that there was a tow truck in the woods in the background. There was absolutely no way of eliminating that element in this composition, but it was something that I was going to look into as another subject since Toni loves her tow trucks. Spoiler alert, it was a much to recent Ford for me to want to photograph so I didn’t get anything with the tow truck unfortunately.
I had spent a fair amount of time out here up to this point and I had shot about 20 frames. I wasn’t happy with any of the early ones, and I had only started to get excited with the last two compositions. It was to be expected because I was kind of out of practice for viewing these subjects as photographs. I had a little confidence starting up though and I knew it was time to start looking at some more creative compositions where the location isn’t important. These are the kinds of photos that I have started to really enjoy working through because they take more thought than the overall compositions. The stories are not always immediately recognized, and there is a bit of an abstract quality that I enjoy.
Since I had spent most of the morning with the trucks, I moved to the Fairlanes next. There was a light blue one that I really liked because that color with rust is always a treat to photograph. I was drawn to the sail panels most of all because this was where the rust was most dominate. It also introduced the two-tone colors of the car which I liked for a bit of contrast. I switched over to my long lens for this stage because it was easier to get the isolations this way. I found that the most vibrant color was on the driver’s side which meant that I was going to be standing in a pile of thorny vines which is always a lot of fun. Fortunately, I was wearing jeans and the thorns didn’t get to my skin at all. I centered the composition on the emblem on the sail which should identify the car to those that know what they are looking at. This is a composition I’ve been shooting a lot of here lately because I’ve been running into a lot of these Fairlanes. It is nice when all the trim is in place because it all works to establish the shapes that I am after in the photos.
When I got done with the first side, I decided to go to the other side which I had deemed a bit less interesting in my preliminary assessment. Upon further consideration, I realized that the passenger side was just as interesting, and there were different tones involved which would make this fun as well. I didn’t want to do the same composition with this side though, so I framed things up a little differently. I also intended on doing different styles of edits on both of them to further separate them. I think I only shot two frames on each side before I was done here. Once you get the basic composition figured out, there isn’t much mystery to creating the photo. This speeds up the process greatly and it allows me to get some guaranteed captures while building up the creativity for other images that require a bit more thought.
If you have followed me for any length of time, you will know that my nemesis is interior shots. I just have a really hard time with them for several different reasons. The main one is usually I find the doors closed and I refuse to open them out of respect. Secondly, interior shots are by their very nature quite chaotic and hard to organize, at least for me. The final reason is that there is usually so much dynamic range that has to be captured, I will usually have to shoot an HDR series to get all of the details.
As I was going around looking at the different cars here, I found that one of the Fairlanes conveniently addressed my primary hurdle for this type of shot. In all actuality, both of the cars were missing doors, but the light blue one was storing a fender in the passenger seat that was stretched over to the steering wheel. That one was out of play for an interior shot, but the dark blue one was prime for a composition. I still had my long lens on which seems to do pretty well with interior shots. I got the tripod set up at the open door and started to get the positioning of it decided on.
The part of this interior that I really liked was that the gauge cluster was a really nice contrasting hue to the overall blue that was in the car. The window was heavily fogged from age which was a great thing considering the Nissan Frontier was just on the other side of the windshield. My goal was to keep that element as soft as possible which meant that I was going to need to shoot with a slightly narrow depth of field. I experimented with various apertures by using my Depth of Field preview button and landed on f/6.3 which seemed to balance everything well enough for what I was after. As long as I could get the attention on the gauge cluster I was happy.
The lighting was not too bad at all, and I found that the shadows were lifting quite easily by just overexposing the windshield slightly. I rarely advocate for blowing out the highlights, but in the case of this composition, I didn’t want any detail in the fogged portions of the glass because that was where the Nissan lived. By allowing that to go off, I was able to bring the shadows up very easily. The only problem here was that I was left with a very blue composition, and this was a very rich blue color. The solution here was going to have to happen in post processing. With all of the blue, I was kind of thinking that going black and white would be the best choice, and that is how I went into this composition.
When I got it home and started to edit the file, I liked the blue tones too much to eliminate them. Instead, I went with one of my favorite desaturated color profiles that toned the entire image down and it reduced the contrast quite significantly. A few more slider tweaks and I had a very workable base image. A couple of local adjustments later and I was very happy with the result. The part that had drawn my attention was the contrasting instrument cluster, and thanks to the overexposed windshield and the glare on the steering wheel, that cluster became the visual anchor for the entire scene which was exactly what I had wanted.
As I was finishing up with this composition I happened to look to the right to see what compositions were in a different direction. The Ford truck that I had worked with for the overall photos that started this blog entry was within an arms length from my position. I found myself looking at the front corner that I had shot earlier from the other side. What I had noticed before was that the wheel was turned the wrong way for that front corner shot, but it had worked for the photobomb effect that I ended up going with. Conversely though, the wheel was turned perfectly for a shot from this angle. The icing on the cake was that the FORD stamping on the hubcap was clocked correctly as well. This one little detail caught my eye and I started to form up a composition.
I still had the long lens attached so I tried to get something framed up with it. At 70mm I was very close to getting it right. I could have switched over to the 24-70mm lens, but I know that there is a bit of a jump between the 70mm settings on the lenses and the two don’t always jive with each other. Since I was so close with this lens, I decided to back the camera up. This meant putting one of the tripod legs on the floorboard of the Fairlane. This got me about 20 inches more room between the camera and the truck. It was the perfect amount and I was able to frame up the shot that I was after.
What drew me to the composition was the way that the fender emblem and the hubcap mirrored angles, but more importantly was the curve of the fender arch over the wheel. That was the basis of the composition, and I chose to cap the top of the frame off with the panel lines from the hood to go with the door gap. The colors were also on point with a teal and orange aspect going on. I used another one of my favorite color profiles to get started on this one in order to capitalize on the color palette. This simple image turned into one of my favorites from the day for the artistic qualities that it possessed. I don’t think I shot more than three frames of this composition because I knew what I wanted from the beginning.
Starting to feel a bit better about shooting isolations on the trucks, I went back to the other one which was the “Custom Cab.” I had started out trying to get a composition of that emblem at the very beginning, but had failed to get anything that I felt was good enough to keep. I set up and tried again with the same long lens attached. Things were coming along better, but I was still struggling to find something that I liked with this truck. I kept with it though, and eventually landed on this composition that I think works well. The crack on the windshield is the key for this composition because it helps to close in the frame at the top. Without it, the composition would look unfinished and awkward. That was just one of the details that went into this composition. I used the mirror as a frame for the image as well as the door handle on the other side. I made sure to include just enough of the teal color to compliment the rusted tones, and I even arranged for the vent window lock to point to the speedometer…even the reflection in the mirror.
There is no doubt about it, this was a very complex composition and one that might be a little too busy in all actuality. I do like it and have chosen to add it to my list of keepers from the day. Surprisingly, Toni even liked this one and she doesn’t usually care for my decay photographs. I take that as a sign that it might actually be good enough after all. Regardless, I do believe that this photo tells a story, and forces you to look within the frame for an extended period of time which I do strive to do with my photography.
I was starting to think that I had shot my fill from this location. I had been here for a bit over an hour by this point and there were only four vehicles in close proximity that I was interested in capturing. Before I called it a day and packed up, I made a quick walkthrough of the cars one last time. The dark blue Fairlane caught my eye as it sat in a small patch of dried out weeds. The beige colors worked very well with the dark blue, and the rust was at the other extreme of the color wheel. I decided that it was worth a try to get another photo from here before I left.
I looked at the scene and found that if I positioned the camera right, I could get a single long weed to cover the “D” in “FORD” which would leave a very simple composition centered around the “Fairlane” badge. Normally, I can’t shoot this composition because I don’t like leaving single letters visible since they look unintentional in a composition. Now that I had the letter covered, I could compose freely around the taillight. Well, in this case, I was working around the taillight bucket sitting within the opening in the rear pan. It was an interesting little detail, especially with the bulb exposed to the elements just outside of the car. That same weed that covered the “D” emblem also framed the Fairlane badge quite nicely and added a bit of flare to the composition.
I got the composition all set and began to make exposures. I quickly realized that my one second shutter speed was too much with the slight breeze. I had to get the weed to be still in order for this shot to work. While I hadn’t run into any problems with the breeze up until this point, it was causing issues with this composition. I ended up cranking the ISO up to 800 in order to get a reasonable shutter speed with the depth of field that I was after. Even then, I had to wait for a lull in the breeze before I could press the button.
All this waiting on the breeze to die down gave me an idea for a different kind of composition with this car. I could use the motion of the weeds to show a bit of action within the frame. I started to recompose and quickly realized that 70mm wasn’t going to give me enough room to play. I went back to the bag and grabbed my 24-70mm lens once again and framed up a composition that I liked. This time, I was including the other Fairlane and even the front of the Crown Vic, but I cropped both of those closely to keep them from becoming major elements to the image. I wanted to focus on the dark blue Fairlane with the rust along with the tall weeds blowing in the wind.
In typical fashion, luck was working against me here. After I had been dealing for about 15 minutes with the wind and waiting for it to die down, I found myself in a very calm environment for a change. Now would have been the perfect time to capture everything tack sharp with the other composition, but that wasn’t what I had set up. I was able to eke out a nearly two second exposure with the existing light. This was not enough though because every time I tripped the shutter, the wind wasn’t causing enough movement. I needed it to go longer than that. Back to the bag I went, and I came back with a 5-stop ND filter. I slid that in behind the polarizer and was able to get a 30 second shutter speed.
I started to make exposures, but even at 30 seconds I wasn’t seeing a lot of motion at all. To add insult to injury, the sun was starting to get brighter which was forcing a faster shutter speed. I was now at 20 seconds and what I decided to do was wait until the breeze came in to start the exposure. At least with that, I would have motion to start with and could hope that it would continue for the duration. I must have shot a dozen frames of this long exposure to get the wind to hit just right. The one that you see here was about 2/3 of the way through the series. I found more wind than this, but the motion in the foreground weed was too good with this one while still leaving the “Fairlane” badge clearly readable. There was sufficient motion in the background for this to work and I was overall happy with how it turned out. I was thinking that it was going to be one of my favorites from the day, but it didn’t quite rise to that level after the edits were done.
It was the last composition that I shot here for the day. I packed things back up and went to look at the tow truck on the hill. It was nearly impossible to get to, and it was much too new a design for me to really want to photograph it. I was satisfied with what I had to this point. I was looking at 57 frames shot which was the first 57 frames since February 1st that I had put on this camera. It felt good to get back to work with it. I wasn’t done for the day by any stretch and set off to find my next subject.
I headed out West, but still planned on staying close to home. I didn’t really have a destination in mind, but I happened by a location that I had shot shortly after moving to Purlear in 2020 and saw the same old Ford sitting on the hill that I had seen countless times since. There was a difference this time though. There was a Forsythia bush on the other side of it and the colors were just too good to pass up. I recalled my conversation with the property owner from that first time and knew that I wasn’t going to get access to the property. Fortunately, I knew that I was going to be able to get the composition that I wanted from the street. I pulled off onto the shoulder of the road, opposite of the property as I had done last time. I got out and built the camera the same way I had back in 2020 with the extender on the 70-200mm lens along with a polarizer.
I started to frame up the shot and I dialed in the depth of field and exposure so as not to blow out the yellow blooms. I shot a total of eight frames before I realized that there was a tree in too close a proximity to the cab of the car. I wanted to spread that out a bit which meant that I was going to need to move to the right a bit. I made the roughly two-foot shuffle over to the right and recomposed the image. I liked this much better than what I had shot before. Once I had the composition set pretty much the same as what I had been shooting, I locked the focus on the car and heard the door opening across the street. Obviously the owner was home, so I stopped what I was doing and waved looking forward to a chance to talk with him and hopefully get permission to access more of the property.
His question changed my mind really quick. In a rather rude tone, he simply yelled “what are you doing?” I can’t imagine it is that difficult to understand the process of using a camera, so I really wanted to answer with a smart-assed retort, but I bit my tongue…kind of. I simply replied “I’m photographing the car from the same spot you said I could several years ago.” He went into a long explanation of how I should ask permission to photograph one’s property. At no point did he make mention that I was on his property, so I said that I was not planning on crossing the street to enter his property. He ultimately decided that he didn’t want me to photograph the car at all anymore and told me to leave. Again, he had not indicated that I was standing on his property across the street, so legally he had no right to tell me to leave. However, it was not a battle I felt like having with the man. I just told him that I would leave and needed to break the camera down. I had the shot framed, and set up so I grabbed the remote and shot this one last frame which turned into my keeper from the set. As I was doing that, he added that if he saw the photo in a magazine that he would sue me. I couldn’t resist at that point and responded, “I don’t bother with magazine submissions, I have better goals for these photos.” That really made me want to just sit right there and force him to decide if he owned the property where I was standing which was actually public right of way regardless of what property he owned. I still chose the higher road and packed up like I said I would and went on with my day. I had the shot that I wanted, and short of using it for commercial use, he can’t control what I ultimately do with it. I’m really hoping to have this one done up as a large print for somebody in the very near future. That would just make my day!
I wish that there was more to this trek because it had sure started off wonderfully. Unfortunately, the two other locations that I found that I wanted to shoot required permission to access the property and no property owner could be found. The sun was starting to get too bright anyway, so I headed on home to get the photos edited. It felt good to sit here at the computer and work through my editing process that is largely automatic now and is just a step-by-step routine that I have honed over the years. There was something relaxing about the process taking the RAW files and turning them into the final photographs. I still haven’t quite gotten to that stage with my portraiture and each edit is a little more involved, but I am figuring out my styles there as well and those edits are going much faster than they once did.
I do have openings in the portrait schedule if you would like to book a session. I still have some test shoot openings as well for boudoir sessions where the creative fee will be waived, and products will be discounted in exchange for a signed model release specifying which photos I can share. I would only need a few from these sessions, but you will have your choice of up to 35 edited photos from your time in front of the camera. This deal will not be here for much longer, so if you are on the fence, give me a call and we can schedule a free consultation where all of your questions and concerns can be addressed.
Also, for those photographers out there, don’t forget that I have three workshops coming up in the next few months. They are each designed to deal with some of the introductory aspects of photography such as exposure, composition, and how to focus. Each of these workshops will help provide you with the fundamentals of photography which you will be able to build on as you learn the more advanced techniques. There are still plenty of spaces left in each workshop, but I’ll be starting to send out the introductory materials here shortly so get your name in the hat as soon as you can if you are wanting to attend.
Thank you so much for joining me on this trek. I wanted to assure everyone that I am still alive and kicking. I’m really hoping that in the next few months that things will start to calm down around here and I can get back to normal again. I miss being able to go out on these treks once a week or so, and I miss blogging about them as well. I’m not sure how the rest of the month is going to go, but I’ve about got the next Behind the Camera finished up. It will be your opportunity to see my studio up close and personal for the first time. That will be coming out on March 1st, so stay tuned!
Until next time….
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